


We Were Already There

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Christmas, F/M, M/M, Multi, Ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 23:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The very notion of an MI6 Christmas is ridiculous. Half the people here aren’t operating under their real names, holidays vanished out of a rather similar window, and attempting to order a vexing double-oh not to get either himself or the target shot whilst sprinting through Berlin is much the same with or without tinsel enthusiastically but poorly threaded between workstations.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were Already There

**Author's Note:**

> _In case you should wonder,_  
>  In case you should care,  
> Why we on our own  
> Never went home  
> Inside of that night  
> We were already there - 'Old City Bar', Trans-Siberian Orchestra (Christmas Eve and Other Stories)

The very notion of an MI6 Christmas is ridiculous. Half the people here aren’t operating under their real names, holidays vanished out of a rather similar window, and attempting to order a vexing double-oh not to get either himself or the target shot whilst sprinting through Berlin is much the same with or without tinsel enthusiastically but poorly threaded between workstations.

“Fuck!” Q hears, loud and ringing in his ears, followed by the unmistakable sound of 007 crashing into and through something made of wood.

What an experience working with Britain’s secret service is. He would never have known that, had he gone the hacker-multi-billionaire route.

“What now?” he sighs, because the only way to handle Bond without going insane (or at least the only way he’s found so far to slow down the process) is to treat a man with close to two decades on him like a five-year-old mystifyingly allowed access to explosives.

“Christmas market,” Bond says shortly, adding in a dark undertone, “bloody Germans.” Q takes a sip of Earl Gray and ponders how the shape of the world has changed in the time that Bond has been running across it. ‘Cold War relic’, indeed. 

(Q’s thoughts are far less generous after he passes the first twenty-four hours without sleep. He would try to work on that, except he’s found that when properly channelled, he’s at least ten percent more prolific on the awe-inspiring gadgetry front, which should be more than enough to keep the stern-faced masters of HR away. For now.)

(It’s entirely possible that eavesdropping on the life of James Bond is having an unhealthy effect on the way Q views his own. And not just in terms of how long it would take Bond to sleep with everybody he meets.)

\----------

At times like this, you can feel the collective employees of MI6 – not the field agents, the ones stuck in offices their entire lives, filing paperwork and half-heartedly flirting whilst idly aiding national defences – positively willing themselves to be working in a normal office. There’s tinsel pinned or precariously balanced along the walls and the odd small Christmas tree (very odd, if like Q one of your subordinates purchased two, one black and one pink, and obtained decorations that seem to include Santa on a Harley and some sort of crocodile with sunglasses). Q’s fairly certain he even caught the dreaded words ‘Secret Santa’ the other day, but can neither confirm nor deny whether this is a thing that is going to happen, seeing as at the very mention he’d ducked behind a convenient partition and sneaked back to his lair.

Inevitably, Eve catches him on his hands and knees. “You are very lucky I’m not Bond,” she informs him, smiling in a manner which Q isn’t certain is any better than your standard blunt innuendo.

All he can do is say “You have no idea” and refuse to get up, because that would be admitting his reason for being down there doesn’t sound very good out loud.

“I take it you’re not the Christmassy type?”

“Not like this,” he mutters. Not all dressed up and going on for days and invading his life as if carols and glitter are some sort of December mandate. Not boxed up and shoved down his throat.

He looks up to see Eve looking thoughtfully down at him. She does that a lot – not the looking down, obviously, she might wear heels that don’t even need him to hide knives in them but Q has been thin and lanky his entire life and (apart from now) is not given towards slumping to hide it, but looking at him at all. 

Q is used to people trying to figure him out. He’s not used to them spending this much time over it.

The thought’s a little unsettling, and it’s not helped by the fact that he’s trying not to stare at her legs.

“If you don’t mind,” he says loftily, still down on the ground, “I have somewhere to be.”

“Yes, you do,” she agrees. “Bond just called to ask there’s any particular way you’d like him to defuse a nuclear bomb.”

Apparently Q is capable of crawling far faster than he’d ever realised.

\----------

Bond asks, “What the hell is a Secret Santa?” and Q once again reflects that James Bond does not inhabit the same world as most people.

“You pick out a name from a hat,” he explains, “and then you buy a present for them.”

“Why?”

If Eve was here, Bond might get a withering look, or some sort of jab based around the name ‘Scrooge’. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on your appreciation for Christmas cheer – Eve is not here, and Q is still glaring at the name lying accusingly next to his mug. 

“Because commercialisation makes the world go around,” he grinds out, wondering who the hell Pamela is, who the hell is even called Pamela anymore, and who the hell decided to make this inter-departmental when half of MI6 has some sort of personality defect when it comes to human contact. 

(Q doesn’t so much swear as repeat satisfying phrases to himself. He leaves anything more verbose to Gerty, who has endured decades of being called Gertrude and is now more than happy to take it out on the rest of the world. She also holds the number two spot on the departmental Tetris ranking, and is close enough to first to make Q worried for the first time in a while.)

Bond huffs out a laugh, as unnerving as ever coming from a trained killer. “Always nice to get an honest opinion.”

\----------

“You’re telling me that neither of you celebrate Christmas?”

Neither Bond nor Q said anything of the sort, but Eve likes to enter rooms with statements that make it sounds as if she’s just continuing a conversation. It puts people on the back foot, which is most definitely not why she does it, Q’s certain.

“Not before Christmas Eve,” Q begrudgingly allows, because Eve is terrifying. Of course, Bond is Bond, this woman shot him and he still flirts with her, so while Q feels as if he’s done something wrong, Bond gets to say, as bluntly as possible, “No.”

She points accusingly at both of them, with fingernails that should not be able to type, evolved as they are into killing tools. “I am disappointed in both of you.”

“What did I do?” Q demands.

Eve ignores him, focusing in on Bond. Q is somehow both annoyed or relieved. “It’s a celebration of drinking and gluttony. I would have thought it’d be right up your street.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere.” Bond smiles in the exact way that Q suspects he’s contractually obligated to do (more ridiculous things have happened around here), before that smile vanishes as if it never existed. Possibly that should be disturbing, but they are dealing with a sociopathic killer they pay to extract information and apparently also to blow things up, so instead it rather seems par for the course. “No bloody point to it. All that fuss and then it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Good to know we can rely on you to see the brighter side,” is Q’s response, before he respectfully bows out before he can get caught in the crossfire.

He watches over the CCTV (as he politely refers to their rather more advanced system which shares some basic DNA and that name) with a fresh mug of Earl Grey. It takes all of thirty seconds before the betting pool starts.

\----------

Q had always known that _Merry Christmas Everybody_ was, is and always will be overplayed at this time of year. However, he had never truly appreciated the fact until Bond started trailing the mark down Oxford Street.

“Are you humming?”

“Certainly not,” Q sniffs, and ignores Jez’s ridiculous scream of “It’s _Chriiiistmaaaas_ in the background.

Q can’t help but feel that everything you need to know about Q Branch is right there in the fact that he is the most mature one here.

\----------

Bond and Eve exchange raised eyebrows over the mistletoe she has somehow managed to affix above her desk. Never one to pass up on a tradition – or at least a tradition to his benefit – he leans in and gives her the invited kiss.

Staring at them from where he had been standing just behind Bond in the doorway, Q reflects that mistletoe kisses don’t usually involve that much tongue.

He also very much wishes he was somewhere else right now. It’s not that he minds – or possibly he minds a little, or not as much as he should, he doesn’t know what’s considered normal or acceptable in this situation – it’s more that he has absolutely no idea where to look. The two of them are putting on quite a show, so in a way it seems almost a waste to look away. What is happening right in front of Q’s eyes is two very attractive people (damn, he hadn’t meant to include the ‘very’) kissing in a way they are clearly both finding enjoyable, and he finds himself just standing there and wondering idly whether this is a Thing or Bond and Eve are just very enthusiastic when it comes to Christmas traditions.

Eve, he might be able to buy. Bond, far less so.

They only stop when a loud buzzing noise starts. M wondering what’s taking so long, no doubt.

“Go on then,” Eve says, indicating the door with a raised eyebrow and an elegant move of her head, otherwise not backing away so much as a centimetre. Bond looks suspiciously like he’s considering taking her right then and there on the desk and hang the job, and that’s not even the last few days of Q Branch’s _50 Shades of Grey_ recitals talking.

In the end, though, Q guesses that the challenge and the chase win out – naturally – and so Bond draws back ever so slowly, raises his eyebrows (speculatively?) (Q probably shouldn’t be trying to narrate), and then proceeds to M’s office in a manner that can only be described as ‘swaggering’.

They hear M exclaim, “Oh bloody – ” before the door swings shut behind him.

Going more on instinct than anything else, Q perches on the edge of Eve’s desk, taking a sip from his mug. Since he’s not entirely sure what to make of what happened – but personally he’s all for ignoring it in the standard British way – he chooses just to look at her and hope she’ll somehow extract anything she needs said from that.

She returns his gaze steadily, before tilting her head and tapping her cheek, not demandingly but certainly pointedly.

Q has a horrible feeling he’s blushing, but he plays along, because Eve is a friend and hesitating will only make things worse and he doesn’t want to be shown up after Bond and a whole multitude of other reasons which make him oblige.

At the last second, she turns her head, catching his lips with her own, and Q thinks, _’Oh.’_

This could get complicated.

\----------

Christmas is Christmas, apparently. Eve seems to think so. And Bond has been pouting, sulking or otherwise acting up over Q Branch’s ‘new direction’ since the whole resurrection thing.

“I bring you the gift of gadgets,” Q announces grandly, producing a box with the air of somebody gleefully passing on their own woes. “Razor wire tinsel.”

Bond looks at him, then at the box, and then, rather harder, back at him. He repeats, “Razor wire tinsel,” each word carefully enunciated to confirm that this is indeed reality.

“Do you want me to tell you what the Santa hat does?”

Bond is already rising from the bench. “Leave it.”

(If 007 mysteriously manages to cut his way out of a French prison cell, Q chooses to not speculate on how.)

\----------

Whatever people clearly assume on meeting him, Q is a fully-grown man who is quite capable of taking care of himself. 

This is precisely why he resents it when people (Eve) get it into their heads that he is some sort of small boy who only needs somebody to tell him when to eat, or sleep, or, as on this occasion, wash.

“Did you really come down here to tell me that I smell?” he asks with a raised eyebrow. “Rather primary school, don’t you think?”

“I’m not saying that you smell. I’m saying that you look like the walking dead but there isn’t enough time for you to shut that brain of yours down to get some sleep, so I’m willing to compromise.”

Eve is never willing to compromise. She arranges M’s schedule, for God’s sake, up to and including allowing for various double-ohs appearing late, not at all, or bleeding from inconvenient new orifices. Q really should have known better, except when he tries to ignore her he catches sight of his reflection in his computer screen and thinks she might have a point.

One enforced shower later, and Q’s cardigan had gone missing. The new one is both red and green, and carries the threat of snowflakes.

Apparently he is livid to the point where it fries the important bits of his brain that endeavour every day to make him function like a normal human being, because when his mobile rings (in his defence, very few people have that number, and even fewer are likely to ring it) he answers it without checking the caller and announces, “I will hunt you; I will find you; and I will kill you.”

“Rather optimistic of you,” Bond observes, and Q lets his eyes fall closed in acceptance of the reality of his life.

(“Why are you even watching _Taken_?” Eve asks, once she’s finally stopped laughing – because no, Q couldn’t keep it from her, she has nefarious womanly ways and besides, it’s this or she hears it from bloody Bond. Speaking of: “Your day job consists of eavesdropping on a man who falls over worldwide conspiracies and blows them up the way you go down to the supermarket.”

“Maybe I want a bit more,” Q replies, trying to avoid commentary on his supermarket trips and unfortunately falling into a much larger trap of apparently saying more than he meant to, judging by the glint in Eve’s eye.

Then he registers what he just said, and decides his lunch break is over now.)

\----------

In the end, the more Eve pesters Q, the more Q needs to take it out on somebody (Bond), and passing on Eve’s apparent obsession with Christmas seems to produce the desired effect to soothe Q’s bastard side.

“I’ll carve a bloody snowflake into one of them if you really want,” Bond snarls over the comms.

Charming as ever.

\----------

“Where are you Christmas Eve?”

Q opens his mouth to answer and then pauses as the phrasing registers. Not ‘what are you doing’ but simply ‘where are you’. 

“What do you mean, ‘where’?”

“Q, if you really need me to explain pronouns to you, I am going to make M sign off on two weeks of leave.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Maybe even three.”

A little belatedly, Q realises that perhaps it isn’t normal for holiday to be a threat rather than an enticement. Maybe this is what ‘job satisfaction’ feels like – if so, apparently to be satisfied he needs a lunatic (or several) to almost get himself killed regularly, an abundant supply of explosives and all the computer power he can get his hands on (which does unfortunately make an awful lot of sense) – or maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome. Doesn’t really matter right now, anyway.

“And don’t dodge the question: where will you be on Christmas Eve?”

“Here,” Q says, confused because the answer is fairly obvious. Where else could he be?

However, Eve informs him, “Wrong answer.”

“Fairly certain it’s not.”

“Because you’re an idiot. On the night of Christmas Eve, where will you be?”

“That’s not what you – ”

“Q,” she cuts him off, narrowing her eyes in a way which never bodes well for anybody, “where will you be?”

It comes out as a question. “Home?”

He counts himself very lucky that she doesn’t pat him on the head. “Closer. You’re coming over to mine.”

Wait. What?

“Eight o’clock. I’ll meet in you in the foyer.”

“Yours?”

“Here. I don’t want you running off.”

Sometimes you can forget that Eve Moneypenny was once an agent sent off into foreign countries with a gun and truly terrifying driving habits. And then these moments come, and Q finds it all too easy to remember.

“Why would I run?” He knows the moment he says it that it’s a mistake, and her pityingly look really is the icing on the cake – or, he supposes begrudgingly, the Christmas cake.

\----------

Christmas Eve at MI6 largely consists of Q Branch apparently competing to drive Q insane with constant Christmas music until his entire brain has been rewired to play him nothing but inane lyrics about attitudes regarding snowfall or desires to have Christmas every day. He definitely develops a twitch in his right eye by two which has nothing to do with the hour of sleep he caught that morning, and he can’t even blame it on Bond because it seems 007 will be home for Christmas – mission accomplished – and not even in medical.

“Christmas miracle,” is Bill’s verdict.

“Bond does favour the unexpected,” Q agrees. It’s only a beat later that he realises Bill is looking at him in a way which is probably closer to Looking. “What?”

“Nothing,” Bill replies, easily translatable as _something_. “Just remembering when you used to insist on calling him ‘007’.”

He’s right, of course. Bill specialises in noticing these little discrepancies, those changes even you don’t detect about yourself. If he says something is different, then no matter what you yourself might think, something must have changed.

If only Q knew what.

\---------

Running into Bond in the foyer is unexpected – he looks like he’s waiting, Q didn’t know Bond actually waited for anything, besides vague orders about who was getting killed this week – but not enough on its own to make Q panic. After all, they both work here – as disturbingly normal as that observation is.

What makes Q panic is when Eve clicks into the foyer on deadly heels, smiles at both of them, and it dawns on him that yes, not only is he spending Christmas Eve with his boss’ secretary, but also James fucking Bond.

He recalls deciding a while ago that he would not be braving Christmas with his family. Right now he can’t remember why – and especially not if he’ll be potentially facing explosions anyway. (Q might be the one with actual access to explosives, but there is clearly something about Bond that just make things combust.) (Possibly the chemistry he can even have with a rock.)

“Right this way, boys,” Eve announces without breaking her stride, and Q and Bond exchange glances to confirm that yes, ‘boys’ refers to them, no, neither of them has any idea how this happened, and no, they will not be objecting to this.

Really, this is Christmas Eve with work colleagues. This is a thing that people do – normal people, in normal jobs. Q’s heard about it from various relatives, and in fact if he wasn’t here he has an invite to Q Branch’s Christmas celebration of hacking their own systems for gaming purposes. (Not that Q knows anything about this, obviously.)

He won’t think _what could go wrong_ because James Bond is involved in this, but for temporary peace of mind he will hazard _it can’t be absolutely awful_.

\-----------

MI6 is an institution built on the acquisition of intelligence. Q knows this; helped gather a lot of it.

That does not stop him flinching when he realises that the DVD Eve’s just put on is _The Muppet Christmas Carol_ \- otherwise known as the movie he has watched every Christmas Eve without fail since he was ten.

(It’s Christmas, everybody has these traditions, these moments when suddenly it doesn’t matter how old you are, you are going to watch singing puppets and bloody well love it, and Q is intensely aware that this is happening in front of Eve Moneypenny, which might be okay, and James Bond, which definitely isn’t.)

He feels like he’s dissolving into a horrible childhood-murdering pool of awkwardness. Onscreen, there are singing cats and pigeons and whatever Gonzo is actually supposed to be; on the other side of Eve is Bond, sitting there, _judging_. Eve might be sitting in between them, but blocking Bond isn’t that easy, because the man has this presence that just fills the room and dares you not to notice him. 

He feels Eve slip her hand into his, and when he looks at her in confusion, she offers him a quick smile before turning back to the film. There isn’t a trace of malice in her eyes, which might not mean much when it comes to spies, but somehow makes Q feel better nonetheless. Maybe it’s just the deluded idea that he can trust Eve, if nobody else.

Yet his hand in hers, soothing and somehow feeling nothing but natural, makes his breathing slow, and the simple fact of her up against his side – curled up on the sofa like a cat or a teenage girl – fades into the comfortable background as he can finally focus in on the movie.

It’s the same as it is every year.

As one of the only constants in his life, he can’t help but love it for that alone.

\----------

The movie ends. Q restrains himself from muttering about how the DVD release decided to cut out one of the key songs, because he doesn’t want to sound like a child right now, in front of two ridiculously attractive killers. He just appreciates the undeniable wash of _Christmas_ , along with Eve’s decision within the first half hour to remove Bond’s phone and toss it across the room. (It’s 007’s phone, Q designed it, it can survive anything short of, well, one of his more cinematic missions.)

“Oh no you don’t,” Eve says, hand snapping out to pin Bond to the sofa the moment he makes a move. (Not that Bond fights back, and considering that if Bond doesn’t want to be pinned then he’s more than capable of breaking out of it, Q wonders just why he’s here.) “We watched a movie for Q – ”

“No, we didn’t,” he tries to insist, but they both ignore him.

“ – so now we have to watch one for you.”

They both look at her, with possibly quite similar expressions of curiosity and incredulity. Q tries to remember, well, any Christmas movies at all, to be honest. (He hasn’t really bothered with films in years.) “ _Black Christmas_?” he hazards. 

Eve looks at him. He does not shy away because he is the youngest Q since MI6 was formed, he can hack into her life and turn it into a hell of endless Gangnam Style parodies, and he also doesn’t want to show that he is both scared and more than a little bit turned on when she gets that expression.

She holds up a DVD. Q meets the eyes of a gun-wielding, tank-top-sporting Bruce Willis and lets out a soft “ah.”

Bond eyes the cover in the clear confusion of somebody who lives by the philosophy that popular culture is something that happens to other people. “What?” 

\----------

Two hours later, Q is fairly convinced that John McClane _is_ James Bond.

Either that or they have just given Bond a hundred new ways to give MI6 heart attacks next mission. (And Q really didn’t need the running commentary on the ‘real life’ intricacies of jumping into and climbing out of vents with sheer drops, thankyou very much.)

Either way, Christmas is certainly feeling a lot more Bondian now – a little less familiar, a little less _safe_ \- and Q’s not entirely sure how he feels about that. 

(Intrigued.)

(Excited.)

(Resigned.)

(Doomed.)

Instead he asks Eve, “Shouldn’t we watch your movie now?” He asks her this because it is far easier than reflecting on the position they’ve somehow arranged themselves into: Q sandwiched in the middle, Bond’s arm along the line of the sofa behind him (at one point Q honestly thought he was going to do the old stretch and yawn trick, but apparently this is just Bond when he feels at home, invading people’s personal spaces, naturally), Eve’s long and very distracting legs across both of them (Bond’s hand on her ankle, Q can’t help but notice) and her head resting on the arm of the sofa, Q feeling rather torn between panic and just relaxing into it. 

It’s worrying how normal this feels. More than the sense that they’ve been heading here from the beginning: the feeling that they’ve been here all along.

Eve’s smile uncurls lazily, like a cat. “We just did.” When he looks at her uncomprehendingly, she adds, “Both of them.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Q looks at that smile; glances down at Bond’s hand tracing higher up her leg; feels Bond’s heat close against his side.

How long has this been happening? (Is it just Christmas?) (Please God don’t let it just be Christmas.)

Oh well, he realises, as her fingers play across the back of his neck and she leans in to brush their lips together – the teaser before the main event, he has no doubt. The point is that they’re here now.

“Not on the sofa,” he hears her say.

“Then why bloody start it here?” Bond. He sounds fairly annoyed.

“You started it,” she says, “because you have a talent for getting in the way of any plan that takes your fancy.”

Of course they’re bickering right now. What else did he expect?

“James, I found you a Christmas movie with explosions. Shut up.”

And then, to be perfectly honest, he finds himself perfectly happy with letting the less instinctive part of his brain float away. It’s not like there isn’t anything else for him to focus on right now.

Like remembering to breathe.

\----------

Q wakes up slowly, eyelids fluttering, body relaxed, feeling warm and safe and content. He can’t even startle awake at the unusual combination of all three of those adjectives.

Without his glasses the world remains in a rather nice soft-focus, blurred and unthreatening, but he manages to make out the time glowing by the side of the bed. Drifting in with the fact is the realisation that, for the first time in his life, he’s slept through Christmas morning.

Behind him, he hears Eve sigh softly in her sleep, as he becomes aware that the warmer patch on his side is Bond’s hand. He thinks he should probably panic a bit more at the thought, but he’s so comfortable that he mentally schedules it for later.

Unfortunately, Q has always been one of those people who not only can’t get back to sleep but also isn’t very good at just lying there doing nothing. Five minutes pass by, going by his own approximation of time (he’s let his eyes fall closed again, trying to drift for a little longer), and then the thought crosses his mind that he should look out of the window. It’s not particularly rational – it’s England, he’s not five years old, Christmas looks the same as every other day in December – but of course once the thought’s there, he can’t shift it. Q is good at a lot of things – bloody genius at some others – except when it comes to mastering his own mind. 

He lets his eyes blink open again; squints around in an irritated search through the haze for his glasses. Finally his gaze alights on a promising black blur off to the side of the bedside cabinet, momentarily distracting him with a sudden and fairly intense memory of having them removed carefully, reverently, before he’d snapped and seized them to throw to one side because evidently there’d been more important things to attend to.

Getting out of bed is an operation in stealth. The last thing he wants is to wake either of them – out of natural and proper concern for sleeping bed partners, and also because there’s no doubt some sort of saying about letting sleeping Bonds lie – and that covers both movement and any chance of cold air seeping in. Not that Eve’s flat is cold at all, just that it really is warm under the covers, not uncomfortably so but more like being curled up in front of the fire in the evening.

Sure enough, they might be looking a little forlorn, but those are indeed his glasses. The room snaps into glorious focus – except for an obvious thumbprint, dammit – and he’s caught by the sight of the two left in the bed: Eve stretched out on her back, one arm curled around above her head, somehow even more gorgeous than ever; Bond favouring his front, one arm stretched over Eve with his hand now resting on an empty space. It takes Q a moment to properly label the latter position as ‘protective’.

Even though he knows that technically there’s no need for decency around these people – least of all Bond, fucking _Bond_ – he still snags his underwear from the floor because he did not have his modesty surgically removed and standing around a strange flat in absolutely nothing is bloody weird and (annoyingly) comes this close to making him blush just thinking about it.

He considers his cardi too, once he’s slipped out of the bed and found that while the room is not cold, it’s definitely not as warm as in there with two other people. (Two other… When the hell did this become Q’s life? Isn’t he supposed to die alone surrounded by cats, or whatever the male equivalent of that is?) However, it dawns on him as he glances around that he has no idea where it ended up. There’s a vague memory of something happening in the hallway when Bond apparently required some sort of reward for letting them get that far, only it’s more than a little distorted through the haze of remembered lust. 

Trying to shake the thoughts away before they get too distracting, Q crosses quietly over to the window and – foregoing the cruelty of yanking them open – ducks his head underneath the curtains.

He’s not entirely sure what he was expecting. Definitely not snow – he’s lived in London long enough not to expect it, and in England too long to delude himself with the idea of a white Christmas. Still, the sky’s clear, the kind of intense blue you only get in winter, which somehow always makes him smell the cold (he doesn’t know why), and it’s as fine a day as you could possibly hope for under the circumstances (ie. England). Idly he wonders how nice it was earlier, when he was asleep.

“Is the world still where we left it?”

Eve’s voice is lower, sleepy, yet still undeniably amused. It absolutely does not make Q jump. He was always going to duck back in at that point.

“Um,” he says intelligently. “Good morning.”

She smiles at him. He can’t help but smile back.

“Sorry if I woke you up,” he offers, even though looking at her it dawns on him that she’s been awake for a while – possibly before him.

Slowly she stretches, and then elegantly rolls out from under Bond’s arm, legs extending at precisely the right moment to carry her to her feet beside the bed. At least Q now has permission to watch. (Although he gets the feeling he’s had permission for a long time.)

“I suppose it is time to get a move on,” she reflects, walking across her room without a single shred of self-consciousness, ignoring the clothes of yesterday on the floor in favour of her wardrobe, opening the doors and carefully considering her options.

Some part of his brain questions how Eve manages to make putting on her clothes more erotic than most people removing theirs. It’s a very disconnected part of his brain, obviously, but it raises a valid point – one he will address the moment he can stop staring.

“I really had better put the turkey on.”

That snaps Q out of whatever daze he’s been in. “The turkey?”

She turns to look at him over her shoulder, hand dragging the zip up the curve of her back. Q is very aware that he is standing in her room in nothing but his underwear, no doubt looking quite out of his depth. On principle, he stands a little straighter, glad that distance verging on indifference is his default expression these days.

“It’s Christmas,” she tells him. “You eat turkey at Christmas.” Then, when he doesn’t immediately react, “Don’t worry, it’s only large enough for the three of us.”

Turkeys are not something you can casually buy around this time of year, and especially not Christmas Eve. Q knows this from very painful experience. The questions lurking at the back of his mind suddenly jump into high definition and surround sound, because he has the suspicion that he’s been tricked somehow.

“How long – ”

“Do you really want to know?”

He considers this. Then he opens his mouth again.

“Do you really want to know today?”

He closes it again.

“Tomorrow I am perfectly happy to unveil my nefarious plans to you in detail. We can tie Bond to a table with some rotating knives, he’ll feel right at home.” Q can’t help but smile at that. “But how about we just enjoy today? You know? Christmas? Together?”

“If you start on about the ‘true meaning of Christmas’,” Bond says into the pillow – the first sign that he’s awake, besides being 007 and hence surely at the ready anytime anywhere, “I am leaving right this instant.”

“I appreciate the thought, but somehow I don’t think you’ll be getting out of that bed for anything less than Her Majesty.” Eve pauses at the door, and casts both of them a smile and a very knowing look indeed.

“Merry Christmas, boys.”

\----------

If you’d told Q five years ago – less than that – that soon he would not only voluntarily watch the Queen’s Christmas speech but also stand when the man next to him did so, he would have first looked confused, then said something disparaging about your intelligence, and finally, if you didn’t leave it alone, infected your computer with something suitably annoying.

“She can’t see you,” he says, as a gesture towards protest.

All Bond says is, “Not the point,” without so much as looking at him.

\----------

Of course Eve is a fantastic cook. Of course.

Q lives off meals that can be ready in under ten minutes tops, because it’s just him and he just cares that he’s wasting precious time on something he’s not very good at anyway; Bond doesn’t cook, but he eats out instead, in ridiculous overpriced restaurants (Q assumes, steak just looks like steak over the camera). Both of them, it seems, like to show approval for culinary skills with less talking (although on Bond’s part ‘less talking’ does not in any way translate to ‘not talking at all’) and more eating.

He only stops to take several photos of Bond in a cracker hat, e-mailing them to Q Branch by holding the button for precisely seven seconds and thus ensuring that the data is transmitted safely and instantly. (Just because he doesn’t trust Bond with gadgets doesn’t mean he doesn’t make them.)

Once the chase is over and the evidence destroyed in the only way Bond knows how (and he wonders why Q doesn’t let him near this stuff), Eve prods Q with a finger, somehow avoiding skewering him on her nail. “Eat up. You’ll need your strength for the washing up.” Then, before Bond can properly start laughing at his expense, she adds, “Both of you.”

Of course.

(James Bond should never be allowed near warm soapy water. At least, not if you want your kitchen to feature more washing up and less molesting of quartermasters.)

\---------

Bond’s face during Doctor Who is priceless. 

This does not, however, prevent Q and Eve from sneaking a photo or two for later ransom and/or auction purposes.

To be fair to him, responses to Q’s digs reveal that it’s not so much that Bond has never watched Doctor Who and hence is struggling with the very concept of a time-travelling madman in a box, but more that he’s almost entirely ignorant of any Doctor since Sylvester McCoy. When Q rolls his eyes at one point and mutters, “Moffat,” he hears Eve laugh faintly even as Bond looks confused.

Q decides not to explain. Confusion is a rather good look on Bond.

\----------

“M gives his blessing, on the condition that none of us ever tell him any details.”

“Seems fair,” Q nods, more than eager to not discuss his love life with his boss. (Especially a boss who can somehow arrange for letters to be delivered on Christmas Day.) The new M might be less terrifying – or maybe that was just Q – but that’s not a conversation he’d want to have with anybody in the position. If possible, he’d rather it didn’t leave this flat. Airing his dirty laundry is hardly at the top of his list of fun things to do.

Bond looks both slightly put out and worryingly like he’s plotting. Q makes a mental note to never ever let Bond near him in M’s presence, and even as he thinks it he resigns himself to inevitably failing to do so.

Still, whilst Eve might be a schemer, she at least has a fairly healthy respect for M, if only because that’s the entire basis for her job. Unfortunately, this does deprive Q of a decent excuse to get out of any meetings involving the branch heads, but he’ll take what he can get.

\----------

The outcome of the night of Christmas Day is as inevitable and predictable as it is enjoyable.

Q is already getting used to how Bond’s first instinct when it comes to having sex with people he’s not planning to betray is to immediately afterwards curl an arm around them or grab a wrist or in any other way ensure that they’re not going anywhere. This development is concerning, but considering he is now having sex with somebody who does not have the best track record when it comes to lovers’ life expectancies, he’ll take what he can get. Besides, it means he can describe it as ‘sweet’, and watch Bond’s face screw up into a scowl that has absolutely no effect whatsoever.

“How are we handling tomorrow?”

Whilst he can’t speak for Eve, Q knows that he personally is staring at Bond in some confusion. “Tomorrow?”

“Work,” Bond elaborates. Q blinks at him as he realises this suggests Bond, while still not necessarily having a sense of decency, might possibly be thinking of others. Christmas miracles, indeed. “How far apart do you want to stagger arrival?”

Just like 007. Treating Boxing Day and the perils of new relationships like another mission.

Q can’t help, to be honest, because his brain just got stuck on the word ‘relationships’. As if this is long-term. As if _Bond_ is assuming it’s long-term. To be blunt, what the _hell_?

“However you want,” Eve says, “although I do suggest picking up a change of clothes from your flats. Wouldn’t want to seem too smug.”

“I think I’m stuck with you two,” Q comments, “I don’t know how _smug_ I should be. They should offer me a pay rise.”

“I know how much you already get paid. If you’re never home, what do you think you’ll spend it on?”

“It’s the principle that counts.”

“I’m fairly certain I’m being insulted,” Bond deduces, followed by the observation, “You two have exactly the same expression.”

Q doesn’t turn to check. “We do not.”

Bond insists, “It’s uncanny.”

“Enough.” Q feels a sharp jab in the ribs and definitely sees the man in front of him - trained to withstand any form of torture - twitch slightly. “You can bicker tomorrow. Some of us cooked a turkey dinner today and have to organise the world tomorrow.”

Q can’t help but smile. “When you put it like that,” he tells Eve, without turning over, content just to lie there between them, “it almost sounds ridiculous.”

He sees Bond smile, slower, smaller, and appearing far more genuine; he feels Eve laugh against him.

“That’s Christmas for you.”


End file.
